Shipping (A Seth Godin-ism)

Certain words invade your vocabulary — sometimes whether you realize it or not. One that has really invaded mine recently is the word, “ship“.

I don’t think that I can go a week without hearing it come up at least a dozen times in a variety of contexts.

I first heard it on Seth Godin’s blog, I believe, and it was an oft-used word in his book Linchpin.

The concept is simple and derived, I think, from a Steve Jobs quote. Ever since I heard Godin use the term in a video, I loved it. It stuck with me.

I believed in shipping. I was committed to it. It became a mantra for me and those around me: Just ship.

Finally, I had a word to describe the type of ethos I wanted to see embodied in my team and myself.

I didn’t want to create art for art’s sake; I wanted to do work that mattered, that made a difference in people’s lives. Not tomorrow, today.

I didn’t want to let a project sit on the shelf, constantly tweaking and re-tweaking, vainly attempting to reach perfection.

I wanted to fall in love with “good enough.”
I wanted to stop giving in to the fear of failure.
I wanted to put something out there — warts and all.

I wanted to change something.

Certainly, there’s a need for perfectionists in the world. When it comes to air traffic control or brain surgery, we want workers who are obsessed with quality. But where I spend most of my time, quite frankly, we need more people to ship.

Creativity is the act of narrowing possibilities and making important decisions. It’s hard and painful and most creatives don’t do it. They just imagine.

But I want more. I want to create. I want to change. I want to ship.

So that’s my word, and I’m sticking to it. Thanks, Seth.

What word or phrase has recently invaded your vocabulary? Share in the comments.

I first saw this word in your blog “The Difference Between Good Writers and Bad Writers, so I followed the word to this page. It is hard to know when to stop rewriting and when to seek an agent but there comes a moment when you have to throw caution to the wind (cliche) and throw your work out there. If you ever read this Jeff, thanks. -Jeff

Viva

Hey, now there are three definitions.

http://www.overthinkersadvice.com/ Wan Muhammad Zulfikri Bin Wan

One new vocabulary to add to my list. Thanks for sharing this Jeff.

SSComicZ

Love this idea, heard about it from Chris Oatley academy and just had to know more! Thanks for sharing and I love the blog super insipring.

http://josuemolina.com/ Josue Molina

I pinged this. The one word, which is very similar, is Finish. As artist, I’m starting to understand this..

Jolin

“Keep people/things that matter.”

I’m can be quite the people pleaser (at the expense of my sanity/authenticity) and keeping this in mind helps me weed through the…weed.

Thanks for the post.

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